40 Fun Facts About Roger Sherman

Which of the four great US state papers Roger Sherman signed was drafted by a Committee of Five?

The Declaration of Independence is the most famous of the four. Sherman sat on its drafting committee, though a Virginian colleague did the writing.

A painting of Roger Sherman and four colleagues presenting their draft appears on which US banknote?

The $2 bill carries the scene on its back, with Sherman among the five men standing before the desk. The original canvas is 18 feet wide.

Before law and politics, Roger Sherman worked in which humble trade learned from his father?

Shoemaker was Sherman's first trade, and tradition holds that he walked to Connecticut with his cobbler's tools on his back. He later passed the bar without any formal legal training.

At the Constitutional Convention, only which 81-year-old delegate was older than Roger Sherman?

Benjamin Franklin and Sherman were old colleagues: eleven years earlier both had sat on the five-man committee that drafted the break with Britain.

Roger Sherman's wife Rebecca Prescott was a cousin of the doctor who joined which rider's 1775 alarm?

Paul Revere was captured that night, but Samuel Prescott jumped his horse over a stone wall and carried the warning on to Concord.

Roger Sherman's grandson Roger Sherman Baldwin won fame defending the African captives of which ship?

Amistad became a 1997 film in which Matthew McConaughey played Baldwin. Sherman's grandson went on to serve as governor of Connecticut.

Which Tony-winning musical about the Continental Congress has Roger Sherman as a singing character?

1776 opened on Broadway in 1969 and won the Tony for Best Musical. By coincidence, the man who wrote its songs was named Sherman Edwards.

Roger Sherman said which officer should chair the Senate, or else he would be without employment?

The vice president kept the chair on this argument: Sherman said a senator presiding would lose his vote, while ties needing a casting vote would be seldom.

Under the 1787 deal Roger Sherman championed, each state sends how many members to the US Senate?

Two per state was the final deal, though Sherman's first proposal in June 1787 gave each state just one vote in the upper chamber.

Which Founding Father wrote to his wife that Roger Sherman was an old Puritan, as honest as an angel?

John Adams wrote the line to Abigail in March 1777, adding that Sherman was as staunch as a bloodhound and as firm as a rock in the American cause.

Roger Sherman's plan for how states are represented in Congress is best known by which name?

The Great Compromise broke the deadlock between large and small states. It is also called the Connecticut Compromise, after the state Sherman represented.

Under Roger Sherman's plan, seats in the lower chamber of Congress are divided among states by what?

Population decides House seats, which pleased big states like Virginia, while equal votes in the upper chamber protected small ones like Sherman's Connecticut.

Roger Sherman led the opposition to the Virginia Plan, a big-state blueprint by which future president?

James Madison wanted both chambers weighted toward the bigger states and fought Sherman's equal-vote Senate to the end. The pair clashed again in 1789 over the Bill of Rights.

In which city did Roger Sherman and 54 other delegates spend the summer of 1787 writing the Constitution?

Philadelphia hosted the delegates in the same State House where Sherman had voted to break with Britain eleven years before.

Roger Sherman signed the 1774 Petition to the King, a plea for relief addressed to which British monarch?

George III never gave the colonies a formal reply to the petition, and within months the fighting had begun.

Which Virginian is said to have remarked that Roger Sherman never said a foolish thing in his life?

Thomas Jefferson is credited with the compliment, which he paid in spite of Sherman's awkward manner and thick country drawl.

Roger Sherman had little formal schooling, yet he spent over a decade as treasurer of which New England school?

Yale College later gave its self-taught treasurer an honorary degree, and Sherman ran a store nearby that catered to its students.

A marble statue of Roger Sherman, given by Connecticut in 1872, stands in which Washington landmark?

The US Capitol displays statues chosen by every state for the National Statuary Hall Collection, and Connecticut picked Sherman as one of its pair.

Roger Sherman died in office as a senator in 1793 after weeks of illness diagnosed as which disease?

Typhoid fever was the diagnosis, though one newspaper of the day reported that his physician blamed his liver. Sherman died in his sleep at 72.

Roger Sherman was elected the first mayor of which Connecticut city, home to his store and his grave?

New Haven became a city in 1784 and made Sherman its mayor; President Washington came to tea at his house there five years later.

Using his own astronomical calculations, Roger Sherman published an annual series of what in the 1750s?

Almanacs let the self-taught Sherman show off his mathematics, and he padded them with verse and sayings of his own.

Which county job, won in 1745, gave the young Roger Sherman the income to start buying land?

Surveyor was a prized post on a frontier where every new farm needed measuring, and the fees also earned Sherman a good name across the county.

Roger Sherman told the 1787 Convention it was a favourable moment for crushing which form of currency?

Paper money lost the vote: Sherman and James Wilson moved the wording that bars states from issuing it or making anything but gold and silver legal tender.

Roger Sherman sat on the committee of thirteen that drafted which first American national charter?

The Articles of Confederation gave every state one vote in a single chamber, and Sherman fought to keep that equal footing for the Senate at the 1787 Convention.

The Continental Association that Roger Sherman signed in 1774 bound the colonies to what action?

A trade boycott was the plan: no British imports, with local committees naming and shaming violators in the newspapers.

Which future Louisiana Purchase negotiator from New York sat with Roger Sherman on the Committee of Five?

Robert Livingston never signed the document he helped draft, because New York recalled him first; his cousin Philip signed in his place.

Which Connecticut delegate and future chief justice joined Roger Sherman in proposing the 1787 deal?

Oliver Ellsworth left the Convention in late August and never signed the Constitution, yet George Washington later made him the third chief justice.

At the 1787 Convention, Roger Sherman wanted the president chosen by, and answerable only to, which body?

The legislature, in Sherman's view, should appoint the executive and keep him dependent on it; he called an independent executive the very essence of tyranny.

Roger Sherman persuaded the House to put the Bill of Rights amendments where, instead of inside the text?

At the end is where they still sit, because Sherman argued the original document should remain inviolate; their chief sponsor had wanted them woven through it.

Despite having no formal legal training, Roger Sherman held which Connecticut post from 1766 to 1789?

Superior Court judge was a post he held for 23 years, even while sitting in the Continental Congress; he had been admitted to the bar after studying law on his own.

Although he made his name in Connecticut, Roger Sherman was raised on a family farm in which other colony?

Massachusetts was home until he was 22, when, after his father's death, he followed an older brother to Connecticut.

William M. Evarts, a grandson of Roger Sherman, defended which president at a Senate impeachment trial?

Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote in 1868, and Evarts, who gave the closing argument, was soon made attorney general.

Roger Sherman told the 1787 Convention which group should have as little to do with government as may be?

The people, Sherman said, lacked information and were liable to be misled, so he wanted state lawmakers rather than voters to choose the House.

Which artist, son of a Connecticut governor, painted Roger Sherman with the Committee of Five?

John Trumbull painted 47 men who were never all in the room at once, and set Sherman in the standing group at the centre of the scene.

Roger Sherman, who entered the US Senate at 70, still holds which distinction among all its members?

Earliest born of all US senators, Sherman dates from 1721, eleven years before George Washington, and sat in a chamber shaped by his own plan.

Which Pennsylvania financier nearly matched Roger Sherman by signing three of the four great state papers?

Robert Morris missed only the Continental Association; the man who bankrolled the Revolution later spent three and a half years in debtors' prison.

In which western Connecticut town did Roger Sherman settle in 1743 and run its first store?

New Milford sent Sherman to the colonial assembly in 1755, the start of a public career that lasted almost four decades.

Roger Sherman urged Connecticut to ratify the Constitution in newspaper letters signed with which pen name?

A Countryman suited the plain-spoken former cobbler, and the letters did their work: Connecticut became the fifth state to ratify.

Which fellow Connecticut delegate served beside Roger Sherman and later presided over the Continental Congress?

Samuel Huntington presided over Congress from 1779 to 1781 and later spent a decade as governor of Connecticut, dying in office.

Roger Sherman's remains were moved in 1821 from a town green to which historic Connecticut burial ground?

Grove Street Cemetery took in the old headstones when the green was cleared; Eli Whitney and Noah Webster lie there too.